On Tuesday, a fire killed at least 20 nursery-school children. The fire trapped them in straw-hut classrooms in a school in a poor neighborhood of the West African nation’s capital.
“There were 20 deaths, most of them young children,” said the head of Niger’s fire service, Colonel Bako Boubacar. He added that the origin of the fire in Niamey was unknown.
The school in the popular Pays Bas neighborhood had around 800 students, including children in the nursery section.
“The fire apparently started around the school gate. The absence of an emergency exit forced the students to scale the wall to escape. Those that died were mostly children in the preschool,” said Mounkaila Halidou, an official from the teachers union.
As reported by another fire service official, it is said that 21 classes of straw huts were on fire during the fire, and the children were trapped inside.
Source: VOA News
